During a heated dispute over tourism revenue last week, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner repeatedly accused City Council members and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith of being bought off by the hotel industry through campaign contributions.

Specifically, Filner said they received “tens of thousands of dollars” from the hoteliers who sit on the Tourism Marketing District’s board of directors and suggested that they would be violating state law if they were to vote on the issue.

Both of those statements are incorrect, though they effectively raised the fact that city leaders had indeed taken campaign money from the hotel industry.

Meanwhile, Filner benefitted from even bigger spending by unions representing hotel workers in last year’s mayoral campaign. One of his early negotiating points in the tourism kerfuffle was to demand higher wages for those workers.

U-T San Diego analyzed campaign contributions for all of the city’s elected officials beginning with the 2008 election cycle and found that TMD board members contributed a combined $16,345 to their campaigns. Councilwoman Sherri Lightner received the most at $4,080.

In addition, Councilman Mark Kersey, who Filner cited as an example of taking money, didn’t receive any contributions from TMD board members.

What is true is that the hotel industry at large has given about $80,000 in combined campaign contributions to the city’s elected officials.

Five of them — council members Kevin Faulconer, Lightner, Scott Sherman and Lorie Zapf, and City Attorney Goldsmith — have collected more than $10,000 each.

Lightner tops the list with $14,245 while Kersey is at the bottom with $25. Filner received $1,100.

Filner first raised the issue of campaign contributions at Tuesday’s City Council hearing in which the council approved a resolution ordering him to sign a tourism marketing pact he finds disagreeable. He then made similar comments in interviews, most pointedly during a Wednesday morning appearance on KUSI.

“Look at the campaign contributions. I mean, for example, the city attorney, who did not have an opponent, got tens of thousands of dollars from these same people who he’s supposedly negotiating with,” Filner said. “The City Council president (Todd Gloria), who was just on here, didn’t have an election. He got tens of thousands of dollars from the same hotel people who are negotiating with us. Most of the council members the same thing.

“Why do they give money, especially to people who didn’t even have opponents? … Because they want a sympathetic hearing of their case. And they’re used to getting that. Yeah, I’ll say it again, they have proceeded with their campaign contributions to buy off most of the council.”

Gloria, Goldsmith and Kersey each ran unopposed in last year’s election.

Goldsmith responded Thursday with the following statement.

“Mayor Bob Filner crossed the line, alleging that members of the City Council and I had been ‘bought off’ by hoteliers in the TMD matter,” he said. “This is a very serious allegation of criminal conduct, and it is baseless and defamatory. … Accusations such as this against the City Council and the city attorney should have no place in a civilized, public-policy discussion.”

Goldsmith has also noted that, under the mayor’s logic, Filner wouldn’t be able to negotiate new contracts with the labor unions that spent millions getting him elected. Yet that is occurring and is permissible under state law.

A deal was reached Thursday on the tourism dispute after TMD officials and Filner agreed to terms. At a news conference Filner was asked if he regretted his comments from earlier in the week. He started to answer and then paused for nine seconds.

“We’ve come to a good day today,” he said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

Filner later added, “I said this was a window of how things worked in San Diego and the closed kind of decision-making between the council and the mayor and the tourist authority and campaign contributions. I mean it’s a web of relationships and I think it’s good for people to understand them.”

Filner also has a web of relationships through campaign spending.

Unions representing hotel workers gave at least $205,000 to political action committees supporting Filner for mayor. During TMD negotiations, Filner proposed a requirement that called for downtown hotels to pay their workers a “living wage” that includes higher pay and greater health benefits. He later dropped that idea although the council agreed to hold a hearing on the issue as part of the settlement.

The other issue Filner raised that rankled council members was questioning whether they were breaking state law by voting on the TMD issue. Filner said that officers of a public agency who received contributions of more than $250 within the past 12 months can’t participate in proceedings that financially benefit that donor.

That law — Government Code Section 84308 — specifically exempts city councils and other legislative bodies because it would likely render those officials unable to vote on a wide range of issues, which Goldsmith pointed out during the council meeting. The law is most widely applied to appointed board members and commissioners who are soliciting contributions as they run for elective office.

“These divisive accusations from Mayor Filner are untrue and unproductive toward reaching consensus and leading San Diego,” said Faulconer in a statement Friday. “I certainly hope that if the mayor could do it all over again he would choose to handle the situation differently.”

Gloria said: “As research easily demonstrates, the allegations are completely false. Our city government can be far more effective serving the needs of San Diegans when we focus on solving challenges instead of being challenges.”

The U-T analysis looked at campaign contributions to elected officials through Dec. 31, the latest disclosures available. City law prohibits candidates from collecting campaign money beyond six months after an election.

That means that the only two elected officials eligible to accept contributions during the tourism dispute were Filner and Lightner, both of whom were on the November ballot. Their disclosures for the first six months of this year aren’t due until the end of July.